Who's That Gal: Vyda Bielkus of Health Yoga Life

Vyda Bielkus

Whe

ther or not you are a yogi, have ever set foot in a yoga studio or have even made a purchase at Lululemon, Vyda is here to break it all down! A few weeks ago, Cameron, Suzanne and I attended a class at Health Yoga Life (HYL) on Beacon Hill after work one night. After 1.5 hours of a sensational stretch 'n' sweat session, we sat down with Vyda to hear how HYL, a true family effort, came to

fruition. Be ready to put your other yoga membership on hold...

A champion
of self-transformation and an accomplished businesswoman, Vyda works on
projects that bridge the gap between business and wellness. In 2011, she founded Health Yoga Life, an
award-winning Boston yoga studio and coaching business, with her three sisters. In addition to teaching regular yoga classes
and frequent workshops and retreats, Vyda leads “Train the Trainer”
programs. The cornerstone of her work is
The Emotional Responsibility Method™ a change management coaching technique she
co-created.

She is a passionate spokesperson for
the emerging market of self-care as a better business practice. Her singular
goal is to help people transform themselves to transform their world through
practices such as yoga, meditation, coaching, and right action. To give clients
around the world virtual access to unique yoga, wellness and personal
development tools she is launching a series of online products and tools.

Vyda graduated from
Wellesley College in Economics, and is certified by the Yoga Alliance as an
E-RYT 500 yoga teacher. The Improper Bostonian in 2012 named her Power ’n Flow
class the “Best-Mind-Body Class in Boston”, and in 2013 she was named one of
Boston’s top bachelorettes. She writes
for many publications including

My passion is empowering
the lives of young women and to encourage them to follow their dreams and do what
they really want to do in their lives.

Vyda Bielkus

JUGs

: Tell us about your
background and how you got into yoga!

Vyda

: I graduated college and
worked for a startup called River Delta Networks. It was awesome, well,
it was a start-up! We started with seven people (I was the 7

th

employee) and we grew it to over 500 people. We were bought
by Motorola right before the crash in the late 90s. I had worked really closely
with the founders who taught me so much about business and how to manage
people, but mostly that you need to be self-motivating in order to be an
entrepreneur. Then came this decision making point in my career. I was getting
stressed, having a “quarter-life crisis,” like John Mayer was saying, right?
I was questioning, “is this really what I want to do?” Motorola was offering me a job, and I knew “I
would die a little bit every day, dressing up in a suit. Working in a corporate
America, I may end up being an unhealthy person.” I decided to attend a yoga retreat, came
back, quit my job (!), volunteered at a yoga studio and my mom was like “are
you crazy?,” and I answered “no, I don’t think so,” and my mom was “OK, go for
it!” My mom raised my sisters and me, in a new-age way. She was way ahead of
her time. She was meditating when no one was meditating yet. She got into
life coaching before life coaches were that prominent, so [my sisters and I]
had known a lot about this lifestyle. I think she secretly wanted us to go down
this path, but I had always been a type-A personality with a 5-year plan, so she
knew it was unusual for me to make this new choice.

One thing led to another
at the yoga studio, and I became COO in a growing yoga organization. The
industry was starting to grow like crazy, and because I was in a leadership
position, I learned a lot. About 5 years ago I decided I was done helping
people do their thing. It was time for
me to do my own thing, so my sisters and I opened our studio doors on 11/11/11!
It was funny because my sisters and I
were all in a state of transition; I was coming from a very intense role at a
yoga company, and had a personal blowup in my life, wondering “what can I do so
I can follow my passion

!
Without any funding or loans one thing just led to another and we got the
doors open. I always tell people to follow where the doors are opening in
life.

We have this perceived
idea especially, the way we as women are marketed to, in having this “picture
perfect” life. And so, we try to bang down doors to get the right guy
(who isn’t the right guy) and the right job (that isn’t the right job). Conversely, the more that you’re able to apply
practices like yoga, meditation or coaching, you can see where your mind,
creativity, and interests really lie in order to follow what truly makes you
happy. I think a lot of people don’t realize that we have choices about how
we work and spend our time, not to say that it’s easy to make the choice that
ultimately makes us happiest, but you can start making those changes slowly.
There’s just nothing to lose. If
you’re not at a job where you’re doing something for yourself, where yoy feel
respected, it can spur you to create
deep motivation to change.

I think a lot of people
don’t take risks and truly follow their hearts, because they are sort of
comfortable. Life is comfortable, like “I can afford to go buy a pair of
shoes, every once in a while”, “I can do certain things like go out with
friends to restaurants”, “I can go on vacation once in a while since I have 2
weeks off”. If you’re willing to sacrifice comfort maybe for a little while,
you can leap and bound forward. That’s really what entrepreneurs have to
do. In the practices of yoga and meditation, that quiet the mind, you can
have real desires and interests emerge louder than your fears and that sparks
change!

So you mentioned you
graduated from Wellesley College… are you originally from Massachusetts?

Yeah! We’re from
here. We’re really very local, when we were little we were on Cape Cod in
Hyannis, then grew up in Brookline. Our nationality is Lithuanian, so we
were raised with the traditions and spoke it at home. The oldest Indo-European living language so it relates to Sanskrit, which IS the language of
yoga, so that’s kind of cool!

Yes, Aida is the oldest
who has two kids, and lives on the Cape. They are totally involved with
the studio, it’s so cute, they do “Mindful Monkeys” (HYL’s kid
yoga program) with her, and practice yoga as much as they can and just have a
ball! Aida teaches and is one of the primary coaches, and co-directs the
Coach Training. Zara lives in London with her husband, and she does a lot
of writing and program development and is faculty in the training programs. We
do a lot of other things besides yoga classes. She writes our web copy
and blog, we have it all! And Siga, who you just met, teaches, is the General
Manager, making sure things are running well and is on top of design elements.
This leaves me, the CEO, working in concert with my sisters, directing
the yoga teacher training and extending our reach and networks both in Boston
and virtually, worldwide. We all have
our parts, and we complement each other so well that the dynamic works.

Vyda Bielkus

How did you decide on
BH as a location?

Well, I was walking by
and saw a sign in the window, and the sign spoke to me. I thought, “you
know, this is it!” I just thought it was an underserved for yoga area, it
was accessible by every T line, near Government Center, near Suffolk, North
Station. I love that it’s so “old school” Boston.

What is the best thing
about being a yoga instructor?

Sharing what I love to
do and hopefully inspiring people to find their way toward greater happiness in
life. We all have a teacher within us, and my goal is to let people find
that. The more you listen to the “teacher within”, the more it will
change your life. My sisters and I have gotten so much from yoga,
coaching, and, meditation; we use it in our daily lives, in our relationships.
And we’ve had such challenges that could have made us crumble, we could
have looked to all of these external ways to deal with it and feel better in
the moment, but instead, we took advantage of these other more holistic
strategies that helped us rise to where we are today. It’s really about
how much happiness we have in our lives. I can say that each of us have a
significant amount. This can be an available thing for everybody. It’s
about how you can work with what is present. It’s about going from
reaction to action, and going from stuck to unstuck.

What kind of training do
yoga teachers go through?

Yoga has become an
industry, where people go through trainings, and they teach based on the fact
that they’ve completed a teacher training. So we offer a 200-hour yoga
teacher training, which is the standard. Then there’s a 500-hour course
that we will start in 2014. Then you go out there and work. I always say, this is like any other job, you
need skills and you need a network. Go to the studio you might want to
teach at, meet the owners, meet who you can, volunteer at a studio to see if
it’s what you really want. Practicing yoga and teaching yoga are two
completely different things. Teaching yoga and owning a studio, also are two
very different things.

Once you come out of a
training, it’s about teaching. Often times those who complete a teacher training
might not be hired to teach right away, so it’s about finding opportunities to
do so. You can teach at your office, once you have built some of that
skill, there will be ways for teaching opportunities to open up, like subbing
for a class. Of course, as a new teacher one typically cannot walk into a
studio saying “I want the prime time class,” so it’s about building up your
experience. I will say that the critical things that have set people
apart from others is to constantly be in front of the teachers/managers/owners,
just like if you were applying for another job. You would do your research.
Then, it’s about networking, being out
there and practice teaching as much as possible.

When you’re not doing
yoga or at the studio, what are you doing around Boston?

I love to have fun, I
do! I love going out to eat, going out with my friends, I like to walk
along the Charles. One of my favorite things to do is to see the flowers
change in Boston Garden. I love rooting for our local teams! Aside from
yoga, I have a long-term meditation practice. I tell my students all of
the time that I would give up my physical yoga practice, but I would never give
up my meditation practice. It was only in my very major personal/work
transition where my meditation practice saved me. Sometimes we’re pushed
to our edge and we fall, but we can’t be afraid to be pushed there.
People often get discouraged and think “Ugh, I’m never going to stop
crying, I’m so anxious, I have to do something about this anxiety. Success
is about how you learn to manage those feelings.

Do you offer
meditation classes at the studio?

We do, we have a series.
We also offer coaching which is a great complement to one’s [yoga]
practice. If someone is trying to make a change, or going through a
change, or in a relationship transition, wants a new job, or are stressed all
of the time, or have an addiction to something, or are looking to transition
off of anxiety medication but don’t know how, coaching can be really
complementary process to someone’s growth.

...And this is
individual?

Yes, Health Yoga Life
Coaching is one-on-one coaching over the phone.
We believe that people know, they have the information, they just don’t
know how to act on it. We’re bombarded with news of what to change,
what we should eat, how we should stay healthy, and we don’t necessarily do
those things. HYL coaching is great during a change process. We
offer training for learning coaching skills as well, which is great for
professionals who want to add to their skill set, like yoga teachers, people
who work in human resources, nurses or massage therapists, and others in order
to work with folks in a deeper way.

Vyda Bielkus

In speaking to the
evolution of your practice, do you have a favorite/hardest pose?

t’s a very deep back bend, the heart
and throat are opening, the back is lengthening and chest is lifted. The
abdominal wall contracts a lot as we sit, it pulls the whole body down and the
energy channels get blocked. Camel is the complete opposite of that, and
is one of the most intense poses. I think that pose changed my body the
most within my practice. Although you can’t really isolate a pose because
poses work together, I would have never gotten camel without having done
warriors, for example.

Aside from yoga, what
other exercise do you enjoy?

I love my cardio. I also love working out with a personal
trainer, his name is Steven Allison. He’s one of our teachers.
We’re doing a “Balance Bootcamp,” at the studio which is two days of bootcamp
style workouts, two days of yoga. I actually have Type I Diabetes, so yoga
and cardio help control my blood sugars.

We learned that
September is National Yoga Month! What does HYL do to honor it?

We have really active Facebook
and twitter pages. We have fun things called “Tuesday Treats.” For
example, one treat was to bring a male friend for free for the whole week,
another was bring a relative for two weeks for free. We’ll be featured on

! Our deals for memberships are very reasonable
in general, too. We offer student and neighborhood business discounts as well.

How do you think
Bostonians can benefit by becoming regular yoga practitioners?

I think we can be a much
more

friendly

city! That has
always been my goal! I grew up here, I love Boston but I feel we’re the
most closed city, ever. So it’s my goal for people to smile at each other
once in a while! We’re

so

type-A, very well educated, all out there to
make it, and sometimes that can take away from the warm and fuzzy. My
goal is to have us “Namaste” each other a little more!

We touched on this a
bit earlier, but aside from yoga, what are some things gals can do to live a
more purposeful life?

I’d say learning
meditation, even baby steps in that. I’d also say reading books related
to personal growth that helps you be open. I’ll send you a list! If
you only sit in front of the TV, there’s just one view point. Read
something that opens you up to something new and beneficial to your own
journey.

What are your words of
advice for beginner yogis?

Seek out beginner
classes, and we have a video “T

ips to know before you go”
on our website. Don’t expect you’ll be good at it. This is what
stops a lot people from continuing yoga. You just have to get over that,
like riding a bike! Also, give it a chance, at least 10-15 classes.
You may not like a certain teacher or studio, so try them all!